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I am a part time college English instructor and a shop owner. Located in Cape May County, NJ, we are seasonal, but I am open weekends year round (if the weather permits...aka snow/ice!). You can email me... dutchrose@comcast.net

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Saturday, August 26, 2017

Variations of this phrase actually date to the 3rd century scribed in Greek, but the person who is credited with the phrase as we know it is an Irish 19th century romantic fiction novelist, Margaret Wolfe Hungerford. In an 1878 novel Molly Brown there is that line.

What started me on this thought was either the 5th or 6th article I read about the children and grandchildren of the baby boomers who want nothing to do with the "stuff" decorating their childhood homes, stored in attics and basements. As baby boomers downsize (do not think of my shop!), what to do? The number of Americans ages 65 and older is projected to more than double, from 46 million to over 98 million by 2060, according to a 2016 report by the nonprofit, Washington, D.C.-based Population Reference Bureau. And so, where to send those Hummels, Grandma's fine china, Mom's crystal for special occasions.

I was looking at some art that my friend Nancy was posting from her co-op at Capt Scraps Attic . Look at this print...

How wonderful for not just a beach home but also a child's room. If you start a child out early with a touch of old, he or she may have that thought in the memory. You do not have to overwhelm...just a touch...or how about her...

You do not need to decorate in a total antique motif, but just a touch in a hall or on a lone wall. I think the collecting mania created addictions. Just one more rolling pin or Beanie Baby (do not lie...bet some of you still have containers in the attic!). Of course, shows like The Hoarders did not help to scare off the younger generations!

Suppose you do have a shore home...rather than Boardwalk buys, look at some interesting "water" subject art. Even this group of three would make a nice motif on a wall, and we are not talking Sotheby prices...

Consider what a vintage piece does to ground a room so to speak. Again, no need to have 40 pieces of art or pottery...perhaps just 3 will give a sense of history and cause someone to pause and look.

As one article directed at baby boomers says, "Our grown-up children refuse to be defined by their possessions. Isn’t that a good thing? Didn’t we snub our noses during the 60’s at people for being too attached to material possessions? Our children have become independent adults now, making their own decisions and creating their own lifestyle – not copying ours. Isn’t that what we raised them to do?"

So minimalism is not all bad...collecting has become selecting...and there is nothing wrong with that!

“Priceless things matter not for their value, but because they offer us an enduring reminder of stability and permanence.”

Saturday, August 19, 2017

As I make my way through the shop, I stop periodically and reflect on how much our culture has changed. I uncovered a folding rack dated 1872. I could not get it to focus well, but it is stamped into the back of one of the pieces.

Now someone made this, not a machine, and then stamped the patent date into the back.

It has the white ceramic tips...and when you think of the design, it is clever. It would ship easily and be flexible to fit into any space.

Again...wood...look at the frame on this mirror...

And a shelf from the Victorian era..

I have been talking about the changes in retail, and these changes do get magnified when you look at products from previous generations.

I love carved objects also. Who will be the carvers of the 21st century? Who will put the phone down lone enough to pick up a carving tool although I did see a magazine devoted to carving --Woodcarving Illustrated. The web site is interesting, and it appears that a woman is Woodcarver of the Year, but the carvers featured are baby boomers.

I have this sweet owl standing on a open book...

Then there are the European souvenirs...

The one shoe has Brest France Aug 1944 carved into it. When I looked that up, I found out it was a major battle. For the history buffs, "the Americans, along with the FFI, had to attack and destroy over 75 strong points in the city. It was slow and time consuming work. By the time of Germany’s surrender on September 18th, the Americans had lost 10,000 killed and wounded. Brest was destroyed – including its harbor. Rather than risk the same at Lorient and St. Nazaire, the Americans simply surrounded the ports for the rest of the war and kept the Germans where they were. Their surrender came at the end of the war. The need for the port facilities in Brittany became redundant when Antwerp was captured in November."

It rather interesting that someone took the time to carve that date into the shoe. Of course, the florals are nicer since they do not require one to think beyond the carving. The little jewel box would be a neat gift package for a gift card or a small treasure...think outside and inside the box!

So, just a little insight into some of the treasures you might not even think about in this Instagram/Pinterest world where you really cannot appreciate the nuances of the items when they are flat on a screen. And in our mass produced society digital age, this is an interesting thought from Elbert Hubbard who lived during the Industrial Revolution...

“One machine can do the work of 50 ordinary men. No machine can do the work of one extraordinary man.”

Sunday, August 13, 2017

three thousand letters in the Japanese alphabet, which could pose a problem. There are only twenty-six letters in the English alphabet, and I get into enough trouble with them as it is.” ~ Rin Chupeco, The Girl from the Well

I walk the Avalon beach every morning, and the other day I noticed some small squares in the sand, and, thinking they were mini tiles, I picked them up. I did not notice until I brushed the sand off of them that they were old scrabble tiles, and I did not realize what they spelled until I pulled them out of my pocket today. Of course, I have to wonder how they stayed together, so to speak, in the tides, but I just thought, what a wonderful find. It does not take much to make my morning out there! I am already overwhelmed by the sky and sea.

This got me thinking about simple letters. I watch grown people in the shop going through a box of block letters.

Trying to spell out that special word...you just need the right...

Of course, today words are morphing into letters...U know?

This did get me thinking about letters and words, and Scrabble came to my mind. I never knew the history of Scrabble, but it dates to the 1930s and an unemployed architect, a victim of the Depression.

Alfred Butts studied games, and he realized word games had no scoring motif. "Attempting to combine the thrill of chance and skill, Butts entwined the elements of anagrams and the classic crossword puzzle into a scoring word game first called LEXIKO. This was then refined during the early 1930s and 1940s to become CRISS CROSS WORDS. It’s been suggested that he also drew on a story he’d read as a child, Edgar Allan Poe’s "The Gold-Bug", in which a pirate’s treasured map is decoded by matching symbols to letters based on how often they appear in the English language. Either way, the upshot was to limit the role of chance and allow knowledge and strategy to play a part, resulting in a blend that’s crucial to Scrabble’s enduring popularity."

Butts studied the front page of The New York Times to make his calculations for the letter distribution in the game. This skilled, cryptographic analysis of our language formed the basis of the original tile distribution, which has remained constant through almost three generations and billions of games.

His guinea pig was his wife Nina who, in a twist that would seem scandalous today, had been his schoolteacher growing up. Was it her fault that Butts always claimed to be a terrible speller? Invariably, Mrs Butts beat him at his own game, reportedly once playing the word ‘quixotic’ across two triple-word scores, notching up close to 300 points in a single turn.

Nevertheless, established game manufacturers unanimously slammed the door on Butts' invention. It was only when Butts met James Brunot, a game-loving entrepreneur, that the concept became a commercial reality.

Together they refined the rules and design and then, most importantly, came up with the name SCRABBLE - a word defined as 'to grasp, collect, or hold on to something'; and a word that truly captured the essence of this remarkable concept. And so the SCRABBLE Brand Crossword Game was trademarked in 1948.

Brunot rented a small, red, abandoned schoolhouse in Dodgington, Connecticut. Along with some friends, they turned out 12 games an hour, stamping letters on wooden tiles one at a time. Only later were boards, boxes, and tiles made elsewhere and sent to the factory for assembly and shipping. In 1949 they made 2,400 sets and lost $450.

Then in the early 1950s, the president of MACY'S discovered the game while on vacation and ordered some for his store. Within a year, the SCRABBLE game was a 'must-have' hit, to the point that SCRABBLE games were being rationed to stores around the country!

From 1952 through 1989, the game went through several owners, and it finally was purchased by Hasbro on 1986. The 1950s games were marketed by Selchow & Righter. Then in 1986 the company was bought by Coleco. When Coleco went under, Hasbro, owner of Milton Bradley, bought Scrabble and Parcheesi.

There is a National Scrabble Day!

So, now you know those scrambled letters went through a lot to get to game night...and now to your ipad or iPhone! But...pre digital Scrabble...

Everyone must know by now that the aim of Scrabble is to gain the moral high ground, the loser being the first player to slam the board shut and upset all the letters over the floor.

Saturday, August 5, 2017

Every now and then, you know I have to vent about being in business. I read several articles this week about the demise of shopping malls, iconic stores, and consumer buying. All in all, it felt like the phrase I sometimes use...stick a fork in it...it is done. Has shopping been so "Amazoned" that we are losing another cultural motif? I have had my shop 26 years now, and I confess that I am a little overdone myself. This is an excerpt from one of the articles about the death of malls..."the grandmothers and goths, the flirting teens, the mall walkers and mall rats. They're all online now, face-to-screen, interacting in ways impersonal and impulsive. It's a different sort of marketplace, unsurpassed in its efficiency and with its own code and culture, but without the skylights, the sweet smells, the splashing fountains, the ethereal Muzak--all of which are still around, but you have to look hard to know it."

That got me thinking about what is missed when you just look at the flat screen...and many times the smartphone index card sized screen. You cannot appreciate the colors or the shapes of vintage pottery. A fellow dealer who visits every summer always brings me a tote of some wonderful pottery from out her way in the Midwest. Consider this piece of Abingdon Pottery, a pottery that was established in 1908 by Raymond E. Bidwell as the Abingdon Sanitary Manufacturing Company. It started making art pottery in 1934 and stopped production of art pottery in 1950. Abingdon Pottery was known for its plumbing fixtures and its dense, white vitreous china, resistant to hairline cracks and chips, yet here is a wonderfully shaped vase in this coral color that seems so soothing. Now, here it does look nice but to feel the cool porcelain on a warm day and see the shape up close and personal...a different experience.

Or consider a Royal Copley vase with the coral blended with the now popular gray and a touch of white. Royal Copley china was made by the Spaulding China Company of Sebring, Ohio, from 1939 to 1960. Just the colors alone attract the eye...

I am wondering if the younger generation is losing touch not just figuratively with life. Another article on smartphones and the younger generation quoted a 13 year old...“We didn’t have a choice to know any life without iPads or iPhones. I think we like our phones more than we like actual people.”

So, as I put out vintage pottery, I wonder what the vintage shops will be like in another 26 years.

There has been all the chatter about making America great again...what about the shops that are preserving what was great in American arts and crafts and supporting those artists who are creating even as we speak? What about the shopkeepers who are still searching, cleaning, displaying for your pleasure? We agonize over cheap Chinese labor, and then we expect these shopkeepers and artisans, the protectors of our past and the creators of our future, to work for pennies also.

So, if you love to shop and not just point and click, step away from the screen and head out into the wilderness of stuff!

"If you wait until you have enough money to decorate and make your home your own, it will never happen. If you wait until you can afford to buy everything new, you are missing the point.

It is the old, the new, the hand-me-down, the collected, the worn (but loved) things in your home that make it your own."